


The Danse Macabre

by Skeiler



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Danse Macabre, Gen, Halloween, far too much research for one short fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 02:37:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skeiler/pseuds/Skeiler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Halloween and graves are being disturbed in Sleepy Hollow's cemeteries. Is it teenagers getting ready for a "Night of the Living Dead" party or something much, much worse?</p><p>(Originally written for a tumblr trick or treat meme, one shot derpfic.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Danse Macabre

**Author's Note:**

  * For [metonymy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonymy/gifts).



Abbie was finding it very hard to concentrate on clearing her backlog of unfiled police reports while Ichabod was sitting at the desk opposite her repeatedly stapling the edge of a piece of paper.

“This mechanism is fascinating,” he muttered under his breath when Abbie leaned around the side of her computer monitor and gave him a very irritated look. When he went back to stapling, his cheek pressed against the desktop so that he could watch the staple being folded, she made a mental note to teach Ichabod how to use Wikipedia to look up staplers and _very quietly_ read about them.

“What is he doing?”

Abbie turned around to see Captain Irving leaning up against the edge of the desk across the aisle. She couldn’t tell if he looked annoyed or amused, maybe both. Abbie threw up her hands and shrugged. “What’s up, Captain?”

“We got a call I want you two to go check out. Sounds like your kind of party,” Irving said. “Disturbance in the old town cemetery, possibly a grave-robbing.”

Ichabod straightened immediately.

“Grave robbing?” Abbie asked. “Great. It’s almost sundown on Halloween and someone’s robbing graves. What did the report say?”

“Well, the report said graves had been disturbed throughout the cemetery. It’s probably just teenagers looking for a thrill,” Irving said as he held up a printout, “trying to spook their friends with all that _Night of the Living Dead_ stuff. But the caller also reported seeing, ah.” He consulted the printout. “Floating lights. And hearing ‘creepy music.’”

“Floating lights and … creep-y? Creeping? Music?” Ichabod asked. “How can music creep, pray?”

Abbie gave him a look. “I’ll explain what creepy means later. Alright, we’ll go check it out.”

“Did you know that in France they believe that once a year, on Hallowe'en, the dead of the churchyards rise up for a wild, hideous carnival? They called it the _danse macabre_ ,” Ichabod asked. Abbie sighed a long-suffering sigh and didn’t even bother to wonder how Crane knew that or whether she was going to spend the evening riding a ghostly ferris wheel with a bunch of reanimated corpses.

“So,” Irving began, slowly, “You’re suggesting the people buried in the cemetery are about to come back to life and… what? Throw a rave? Bob for apples? Oh, or are they going to have one those tanks people get dunked in? I _love_ those.”

For about ten seconds, Ichabod looked like he was going to give Irving a serious answer. Then his face puckered and he went back to stapling, huffily. Abbie stood up, unable to keep from chuckling, and grabbed her coat, “Come on, Crane, let’s go buy some undead carnival tickets.”

They arrived at the cemetery just as the sun was about to set. The shadows stretched in long, dark patches behind the headstones and mausolea. Abbie was still trying to define “creepy” to Crane’s satisfaction.

“It’s like,” she said, for about the fifteenth time, “when something makes your skin crawl. You know? Something that makes all the hairs on the back of your neck stand up? Or someone who keeps hanging around and makes you feel really nervous but you aren’t quite sure why? That’s creepy.”

Crane stopped and opened his mouth, no doubt to hold her personally responsible for the creation of a word that displeased him, when a soft strain of music floated on the sudden breeze. Crane’s eyes went wide and Abbie shuddered. “That? That was creepy.”

“Yes, that illustrates your point perfectly,” Crane agreed.

Abbie unholstered her weapon and held it by her thigh. She and Crane both swung their flashlights along the ground in the growing darkness. They could see that graves _had_ been disturbed, it seemed like dozens of them. The music seemed to be getting loud as they reached the top of a small incline towards the center of the cemetery—Abbie could tell it was some kind of classical music, so it didn’t seem like they’d be lucky enough to find a bunch of teenagers throwing a cemetery rave.

“This… _danse macabre_ ,” Abbie whispered to Crane as they reached a large mausoleum with its door gaping open. “What was the point? I mean, what did the dead people do when they came back to life?”

Crane stepped up to the open mausoleum and peered into the darkness. The music seemed to be coming from inside. “I’m not sure. I’m not French. But the _danse macabre_ was a popular motif in medieval art—it functioned as a _memento mori_ , a cautionary tale that life is fragile and that mortal vanities and glories are ephemeral.”

“Uh huh.”

“Usually the _danse macabre_ featured figures from all walks of life—kings, noblemen, bishops, peasants—in order to illustrate for the viewer that all men are made equal in death,” Crane continued. “The representations were popular in churches and cemeteries. 

“So, if we go in there and we find a bunch of dancing corpses, what do we do? Burn them?” Abbie asked.

Crane gave her an irritated look. “We should probably ascertain whether they constitute an actual _threat_ before we employ extreme measures. They may simply go back to their eternal rest when the night is over.”

“Okay, but _why_ are they down there? I mean, this has never happened before, so why now? Does it have something to do with the Horseman?” Abbie stepped up next to Crane in the mausoleum’s doorway. They both looked down into the impenetrable darkness. Crane toyed with the iron hinge, scraped rust off the aged metal with a fingernail.

“Perhaps we should go back to the Armory and look into Sheriff Corbin’s files to see if there is any record any other similar occurrences,” Crane suggested, clasping both hands behind the small of his back and doing a sharp about-face turn. “Perhaps this is some significant anniversary, or there is a record of some _witch_ or necromancer who might be interested in raising the dead. Forewarned is forearmed, Lieutenant.”

He took one step forward before a screech pierced the night air. Abbie grabbed Crane’s arm instinctively and tugged him back toward her. “ _It came from in there_ ,” she whispered. They both looked at each, apprehensively.

“I suppose this once we should leap before we look,” Crane suggested.

Abbie steeled herself and pointed her flashlight into the mausoleum. It seemed to do very little to dispel the darkness. “Alright. Let’s get this over with.”

She took a deep breath and went through the doorway first. It took no more than three steps for her to feel like she’d been swallowed up by the earth. The mausoleum’s main room must have been more like a crypt, because once they’d gone through the open door, there was nowhere to go but down a flight of stairs. The air became stale and the walls glistened damp and slimy in the light of their flashlights. After about a dozen steps, the stairs turned sharply to the right and doubled back on themselves. Abbie stopped abruptly, reluctant to proceed into the darkness. Crane ran into her.

“Lieutenant?” he asked in a whisper.

“Do you smell that?” Abbie whispered back. There was something tickling the back of her throat, some smell not quite overpowered by the smell of mold and cold stones.

“I smell a quite considerable amount of damp,” Crane replied, drily.

Abbie inhaled deeply, and tried to put her finger on what it was she thought was waiting for her at the end of the stairs. She knew that the most reasonable thing to do to was to go towards the smell, but she just really didn’t want to go farther into the mausoleum’s dank innards. Crane had turned around and was swinging his flashlight along the ceiling back the way they’d come. Abbie straightened up and took another step forward. As she turned the corner of the stairs, the mystery smell intensified and she almost laughed out loud from relief. She crept down the last flight rapidly, leaving Crane stumbling along behind her.

The mausoleum’s main room was, in fact, at the bottom of their stairs. There were four tombs arranged around a central dais on which had once stood a statue of a pensive angel, which was now reposing inelegantly on its side on the floor. Lounging around the room were, Abbie’s police-trained eyes counted quickly, two vampires, one Freddy Kreuger (without his mask), a man wearing a bow tie and a fez, and two zombie cheerleaders.

“Police!” Abbie barked as she stepped into the room, which was lighted by a fire burning in the middle of the dais.

Five of the teenagers jumped and ran in circles before gathering against the far wall, while the smaller vampire tried hurriedly to dispose of a blunt and a small plastic bag in the fire.

“Oh my god, no,” one of the cheerleaders wailed. “My mom is gonna _kill me_.”

Abbie re-holstered her weapon and rather obnoxiously shined her flashlight into the kids’ eyes. They all looked at her with a mixture of remorse and aggression. When Crane stepped into the room behind her, they switching to looking confused.

“Alright, kids,” Abbie said while Crane walked past her to the fire and poked at the unsuccessfully-disposed-of baggie. “Under normal circumstances I might let you off _one time_ , but the prank with the music and digging around the graves gets you all hauled in to see the captain.”

“Lieutenant,” Crane interjected.

Abbie waved him off as she pulled out her radio. The kids looked at each other and shuffled nervously. Abbie sized them up in case they decided to make a run for it. “This is Lieutenant Mills at the cemetery, requesting backup.”

“Ms. Mills,” Crane tried to get her attention again.

“Not _now_ , Crane,” Abbie cut him off as she shook her radio. “Damn thing isn’t working down here.”

“Officer,” the smaller vampire squeaked, “we didn’t do anything!”

Abbie fixed him with a disbelieving look. “Did you know disturbing a grave is a Class E felony?” she asked. This was maybe stretching things—it was only a Class E felony if it could be proved that they did it in order to steal something from the grave, which Abbie doubted. Still, it didn’t hurt to put the fear of the law into these kids. “That means you could go to jail for sixteen months.”

The other cheerleader shrieked “But we didn’t do it!” before they all uniformly bolted for the door. Crane managed to stand and grab the fez-wearer around the waste, but was pulled over by Freddy and toppled to the ground next to the statue. The bigger of the two vampires gentle relocated Abbie away from the door (‘This kid has to be on the wrestling team,’ she thought as she felt her feet briefly swing freely above the ground) and gave her a disorienting spin while the other clambered noisily up the mausoleum’s stairs.

Crane had recovered by the time Abbie got her bearings and put a solicitous hand on her arm to help her steady herself. Abbie tried to pull away with an impatient “ _Let’s go!_ ”, but Crane tugged her back.

“Lieutenant, _listen_ ,” he implored.

“To _what_ , Crane?” Abbie snapped back.

Then she heard it. Or rather—didn’t hear it. The tomb they were in was silent, the only sound that of their breathing. The music was almost non-existent, nothing more than the faintest whisper of an occasional melody. Abbie turned around, as though expecting the source of the music to become apparent if she looked. “But… I thought the music was coming from in here?”

Crane walked past Abbie to the tomb’s entryway and looked back up the staircase. “That is apparently not the case."

They started back up the staircase, cautiously at first but with greater urgency when they heard distant screams. As they came through the mausoleum’s door and back into the fresh air, Abbie could see the figures of the two zombie cheerleaders sprinting across the cemetery towards the main road. They kept turning to look behind them, back up the hill Abbie and Crane had been climbing when they found the mausoleum full of delinquent teenagers.

Abbie and Crane took off up the hill at a full sprint. They reached the top and Abbie nearly fell over when she say what was on the other side and tried to stop dead in her tracks: it was almost exactly as Crane had described, a mass of dancing dead people. They seemed to be from all walks of life and all time periods since the founding of Sleepy Hollow—farm hands in ragged trousers danced next to ladies in elaborate Victorian dresses, and Pilgrims danced with Native Americans and what could only have been a gin runner during Prohibition in his life. It was almost beautiful, in a way—the dead were luminescent facsimiles of their former selves, their clothes and flesh effulgently diaphanous. But beneath the spectral forms, Abbie could see the last vestiges of their corporeal forms: in some cases hard, white bones and in others dripping shreds of flesh. What at first glance had seemed like a beautiful collection of glamorous dancing people turned out, on second look, to be something out of a gruesome nightmare.

To Abbie’s surprise, she saw the corporeal figures of Freddy Kreuger, the kid with the bow tie (who had apparently lost his fez), and the larger vampire partnered with three ghostly women and moving in concert with them around the open hollow. They didn’t seem to be afraid—they didn’t seem to be feeling anything at all, Abbie noticed. The three living boys had blank, entranced looks on their faces and even from their distance, Abbie could see that their fingers and lips were looking distinctly blue, in spite of the relatively mild weather.

The music was being played by a group of mismatched musicians, from across the centuries. Their wraithly hands held equally ghosty instruments, and Abbie found it increasingly hard to ignore the melody they were playing. The energetic tune seemed to become louder and louder until Abbie found it difficult to resist moving in time to the music. She saw it was having the same effect on Ichabod, and when a ghostly corpse in a shimmering Victorian ball gown approached him, he willingly took her hand with a gentlemanly bow and joined in the dance. A moment later a grinning skeleton shrouded by the faint form of a man in a powdered wig approached Abbie, and she found herself unable to resist his invitation. Through the man’s gossamery blue flesh, she could see the bones of his hand and felt his cold, strong grip on her own. To her surprise, Abbie found herself falling into step with the other dancers without hesitation. Somehow, she just knew what to do, what steps and sways and curtsies to make and when to make them. And with each movement the music seemed louder, and to exert a stronger influence over her. She could feel her rational brain giving up the struggle against what was happened, until she caught herself smiling and dancing and no longer caring much about the fact that the man she was dancing with was, in fact, dead.

A new dance started, in which Abbie found herself moving from dead dancing parting to dead dancing partner, hardly noticing any longer the feel of their bones gripping her hand. The whole wide world Abbie had known seemed to be narrowing inexorably to the small corner of the Sleepy Hollow graveyard in which the dance was happening. Abbie was dimly aware that she was losing feeling in her hands, but found it beyond her power to feel concerned. Nearby, the bow tie-wearer fell to the ground, motionless. His partner moved effortlessly back into the dance, and Abbie felt herself swept on and away from him.

Just as Abbie was beginning to black out, she changed partners and found herself holding Ichabod’s hands. Their warmth snapped her out of her daze and back to reality. The overwhelming power of the music receded, but as soon as they let go of each other, Abbie felt it surging back to the forefront of her consciousness. She grabbed Ichabod’s hand again and clenched it tight.

“As long as we’re holding on, the music seems to have less power,” Abbie pointed out, while she tugged Ichabod towards where the bow tie kid was laying on the ground.

“Yes, a physical connection to another living person may counteract the music’s effects,” Ichabod concurred. He laid a hand across the bow tie kid’s forehead. “He is very cold, Lieutenant.”

“Come on, kid,” she said as she grasped his hand. After a moment, the kid sucked in breath and opened his eye. “There you go, come on.”

“What’s going on?” the kid asked. He looked frightened now.

“I don’t have time to explain, but we need to get moving if we’re going to help your friends,” Abbie said as she and Ichabod tried to move in concert to help the kid to his feet. Ichabod held on to the kid with his free hand, and Abbie pulled all of their towards where Freddy Kreuger was dancing with a flapper in a short skirt. “Alright, kid, grab Freddy’s hand and don’t let go. If you let go, you’ll start dancing again.”

The kid did as he was told. Within a minute of grabbing Freddy’s hand, both of them looked infinitely more alive than they had. Abbie instructed them to go grab the larger vampire and head for the main road without stopping for anything. Freddy snickered, “Man, Matt’s not gonna like that. Holding hands.”

“Well you can tell him if he wants to stay here and dance until he drops dead, that’s his prerogative. Or he can hold a guy’s hand for ten minutes and get out of here,” Abbie snapped.

The kids took off, and it turned out Matt was more inclined to get out of the cemetery than he was averse to holding hands with another guy.

Ichabod and Abbie were left standing near the center of the whirling mass of dancing dead. Ichabod pulled Abbie closer to the musicians. When they got there, they proved to be just as ephemeral as the rest, with ghostly instruments to match. Ichabod reached out and tried to grab hold of the neck of a fiddle, but his hand passed right through it.

“What do we do, Crane?” Abbie asked. “We can’t just walk away from this. What if it starts drawing more people in?”

“I do not know, Lieutenant,” Ichabod replied. “I am wracking my brains for any idea or memory, but… I have no useful suggestions. The _danse macabre_ was first represented in the Cimetière des Innocents in Paris in the fifteenth century, but I don’t know, beyond a general fear of widespread plague in the wake of the Black Death and an obsession with mortality, what influenced its creation.”

Abbie looked around, frustrated that there wasn’t an easy solution to the problem. “Let’s get away from it, at least.”

They headed back towards the main road, pausing again at the top of the small hill. Abbie pulled out her radio and got through to the dispatcher. “I need Captain Irving _now_.”

A few seconds later, Abbie heard, “What is it, Mills?”

“Sir, you’re really not going to believe this,” Abbie began. She could practically hear Irving roll his eyes. “Crane was right—there’s a bunch of reanimated dead people dancing in the cemetery. There’s some music—it’s hypnotizing people. Couple of kids… I don’t know, it’s like they passed out from hypothermia. We need to set up a cordon and keep people away from the cemetery.”

There was silence from the other end of the line. Finally, Irving said, “Alright, Mills. I’ll have Broadway shut down on either side, and send units to keep the residents in the area from getting close to the cemetery. Good thing it’s almost midnight, most of the trick or treaters have been off the streets for hours now.”

“Thank you, sir. We’re going to try and figure out how to stop this.”

Moments later, Abbie could hear the squeal of sirens in the distance. She and Crane stood there, holding hands, and watched the dancers. Abbie’s radio crackled, “Mills?”

“Yes, Captain?” she replied.

“Any change?”

“No, Captain,” Abbie replied. She shook her head. “Crane. Anything?”

Ichabod shook his head. Above the sounds of the ghostly music, a bell began to toll. Abbie turned to look behind them, towards the southern end of the cemetery. Her brow scrunched up, “That’s odd. The bell in the Old Dutch Church hasn’t worked for years.”

“Lieutenant, look,” Crane said.

Abbie turned back. With each toll of the bell, the dancers became less luminescent, their unearthly raiments fading to nothingness, until all that was left was a group of decayed skeletons. As the final bell tolled, the music came to its final conclusion and the dancers all stopped and bowed to their partners before collapsing into heaps of dust and bones.

The only figure that remained standing was the fiddler, at the center of the mess. He turned his head to look towards Abbie and Crane, and the darkness around his left eye shifted peculiarly before he faded from sight with an elegant bow to the two living.

“Did… Did he just _wink_ at us?” Abbie asked.

“Indeed, I believe he did,” Crane confirmed.

“Well, what now?”

“I don’t know about you, Ms. Mills, but I have a powerful desire to dance a jig,” Crane said. He took a step backward and held his hand out for Abbie’s.

“Oh, no, no way,” Abbie laughed, waving him off. “I’ve had enough dancing tonight for an entire _lifetime_.”

“Ms. Mills, you disappoint me,” Crane laughed, in his turn. “Shall we go and tell the Captain that he return Sleepy Hollow to normal?”

The pair took off down the hill towards the road.


End file.
